TSB14C01A, TSB14C01AI, TSB14C01AM
5-V IEEE 1394-1995 BACKPLANE TRANSCEIVER/ARBITER
SGLS107A – FEBRUARY 1999 – REVISED NOVEMBER 1999
14
POST OFFICE BOX 655303
DALLAS, TEXAS 75265
PRINCIPLES OF OPERATION
bus request
For fair or priority access, the link requests control of the bus at least one clock after the phy-link interface
becomes idle. When the link senses that the CTL terminals are in a receive state (CTL 0 and CTL1 = 10), then
it knows that its request has been lost. This is true anytime during or after the link sends the bus request transfer.
Additionally, the phy ignores any fair or priority requests if it asserts the receive state while the link is requesting
the bus. The link then reissues the request one clock after the next interface idle.
The cycle master node uses a priority request (PriReq) to send the cycle start message. To request the bus to
send isochronous data, the link can issue the request at any time after receiving the cycle start. The phy clears
an isochronous request only when the bus has been won.
To send an acknowledge, the link must issue an ImmReq request during the reception of the packet addressed
to it. This is required because the delay from end-of-packet to acknowledge request adds directly to the
minimum delay every phy must wait after every packet to allow an acknowledge to occur. After the packet ends,
the phy immediately takes control of the bus and grants the bus to the link. If the header cyclic redundancy check
(CRC) of the packet turns out to be bad, the link releases the bus immediately. The link cannot use this grant
to send another type of packet. To ensure this, the link must wait 160 ns after the end of the received packet
to allow the phy to grant it the bus for the acknowledgement, then releases the bus and proceeds with another
request.
Although highly improbable, it is conceivable that two separate nodes can believe that an incoming packet is
intended for them. The nodes then issue an ImmReq request before checking the CRC of the packet. Since both
phys seize control of the bus at the same time, a temporary, localized collision of the bus occurs somewhere
between the competing nodes. This collision would be interpreted by the other nodes on the network as being
a ZZ line state, not a bus reset. As soon as the two nodes check the CRC, the mistaken node drops its request
and the false line state is removed. The only side effect would be the loss of the intended acknowledgment
packet (this is handled by the higher-layer protocol).
Once the link issues an immediate, isochronous, fair, or priority request for access to the bus, it cannot issue
another request until the phy indicates a lost (incoming packet) or won (transmit) signal. The phy ignores new
requests while a previous request is pending.
read/write requests
For write requests, the phy takes the value in the data field (see Table 2) of the transfer and loads it into the
addressed register as soon as the transfer is complete. For read requests (see Table 2), the phy returns the
contents of the addressed register at the next opportunity through a status transfer. The link is allowed to perform
a read or write operation at any time. When the status transfer is interrupted by an incoming packet, the phy
continues to attempt the transfer of the requested register until it is successful.